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Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 20:35:53 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199605281035.UAA13366@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: grog@lemis.de, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Indentation styles
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

>First, a question: is there a recommended FreeBSD indentation style?

Yes.  See style.9 in -current or /usr/src/admin/style/style in 4.4BSD.

>Now, my problem: I frequently modify other people's code, which
>sometimes causes me problems in reading, simply because the
>indentation varies so much from the indentation that my tools and I
>use.  Frequently, I just give up and run the whole source through
>indent(1).  The resulting modifications work (usually), but it's
>difficult to pass them back to the original author as diffs.

Don't use indent on other peoples code.

>Therefore, my suggestion: if FreeBSD doesn't have a canonical
>indentation style, it should get one.  The style should be
>reproducible with indent(1). (For those of you who don't know,

BSD indent is too broken to produce BSD style :-(.  It can only
produce an approximation that looks OK but has too many differences
for automatic use.

>If there is already a recommended FreeBSD indentation style, can it be
>reliably produced with indent(1)?  If not, what do people think about
>modifying it to a (closely similar) form which can be created with
>indent(1)?

indent(1) should be changed, not the style.  Otherwise 200MB of current
sources that sort of have the correct style would have the wrong style.

>Finally, a restriction.  Indent style can, in some cases, influence
>coding style: for example, if you choose an indent of 8 and indent
>braces 8 characters and the contents of a block another 8 spaces,
>you'll soon run out of margins.  Even if you only indent a single 8
>characters, you'll end up writing different code from people running
>smaller indents.  Does this matter?

8 is too much but we're stuck with it.  There is something to be said
for the discipline required to minimise nesting.  Don't right code like
this:

{
	{
		{
			{
				{
					{
						{
							{
								{
									/*
									 * Com-
									 * men-
									 * ts
									 * are
									 * hard
									 * to
									 * fit
									 * bet-
									 * wee-
									 * n
									 * col-
									 * umns
									 * 72
									 * and
									 * 80.
									 */
									 {
									/*->*/	{
									/*->*/	    /* Some people's xterms are too wide. */

Bruce